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So, in the last two weeks I have setup two computers with Windows XP 64bit edition. I can honestly say I now consider this the most limited OS ever created. If you think Linux can be limiting try using an iPhone or an Epson scanner with XP 64. iPhones are officially unsupported on XP 64 including Mobile Me, the icon of which isn’t even installed. Epson completely missed the memo that XP 64 exists, unlike several companies worth mentioning. Canon, Asus, Dell, and HP, to name a few I had to deal with, all had proper drivers for their hardware. I will think twice before ever using a 64 bit desktop ever again.

So, another large gap has managed to slip its way into my blog writing and so much has happened. I’m feeling far more settled into my new job. Waking up in the morning is a usual occurrence rather than a startling nightmare. I really like the people I work with and I’m learning a lot researching solutions and scripting things for the servers. Speaking of which I plan on doing a write up on creating ADM policy files for Server 2003 R2 SP2. I spent the better part of a day trying to get a simple script working with almost no luck. In the end I found some example code and all is working wonderfully now. Last quarter is completely over and I can’t believe it, but it appears as though I escaped unscathed by some miracle. Not my best quarter, but I’m not going to turn down 3 B’s. That was a very welcome discovery today. I’m looking forward to the fresh start at school next week. I will need to figure out my schedule a bit more and hammer out the details, but I should end up with the 4 classes I want. I’ve been working on several side jobs and hopefully I can keep everything tidily balanced and running smoothly. I have started to pickup my coding tasks and moving forward with those. Sadly I haven’t been able to work on my projects for quite some time. I’m probably going to wait until my financial situation levels out before pursuing any new projects. The timing of this new job worked out perfectly, I will have 3 weeks of work on my first paycheck and I’ve worked nearly full time for the last two weeks because of finals and spring break. So, even though I didn’t get much of a vacation I can hopefully get my finances back in line.

    So, today marks the beginning of the end of the quarter. Finals are next week, spring break the following, and just like that we launch into another 10 weeks of courses. I thought it would be good to reflect back on how much I’ve changed this quarter. I may not have done very well in my match class, but I think I learned a lot about myself instead. I finally got myself a stable job, which I’m so happy about. Having finished my first week at Arbitech I think it’s a great fit. I’m sure I’ll be forced to endure the new guy status for a while longer, but everyone is really cool. I happy to have made it through this last quarter solely on consulting income, but I’m looking forward to being able to buy some toys and tryout some projects far more. To my surprise I’m not having that much trouble waking up at 6 AM to be at work by 7:30AM. Anybody that knows me at all, knows I’m not a morning person. In a way this is something that has changed about me. I used to sleep through alarm clocks, earthquakes, the end of the world, you name it. Not so much anymore.

On my  way home today I started thinking about how society is rapidly changing because of computers. Now, before you stop reading, this isn’t another rant on how computers are special, and good, etc. I’m thinking more specifically of how we store information as human beings. With search capabilities growing more and more common, our endless exploration of folders has come to a close. The way we think about everything is changing. With Google, you no longer have to remember the name of a web page, but only three special words or so from a sentence, with iTunes you no longer need to remember the name of that band, but only that their album was Dead Parade something. We as people can remember more by remembering less and rely on computers to remember all of it. With the advent of search systems like Spotlight and Windows Live Search these ideas don’t limit themselves to online material. With Windows Vista and Mac OSX it is now more efficient to search for something than to take the time guessing even once where that file is or to even navigate directly to it. That is astounding considering so many advances have been made in user interface design. Consider Google’s home page, that is the definition of what a user interface is coming to. I wouldn’t doubt that someday Windows will be a search box centered on your screen. To launch a program or do anything with it you wouldn’t click you simply start typing what you want to do or what you want to work on and Windows will make it happen. With drive space expanding exponentially while changing form factors simultaneously it is becoming increasingly important to index all of our data and be able to look through it quickly and efficiently. I think this phenomenon is going to bring about some startling changes in the computer industry soon. Hardware assisted searching or hardware that is specifically designed to accelerate searching is going to become a key focus for manufacturers as well as coders alike.

I’ll post some more updates and thoughts later. For now I’m off to dinner.

It finally came through!!! I’m officially employed part time by Arbitech. I begin Monday morning at 9:00am. I’m extremely excited. I can hardly wait to get started, so that I can further a bunch of my projects. I have some new things I want for the Jetta specifically a front upper tie bar and a lower sway bar. I checked out the Neuspeed products and think I’m going to settle on those. This will also enable me to buy some more home automation devices. I have been enjoying my current setup. Along with a new job the iPhone SDK was released today. I was amazed at the progress Apple has made on the iPhone. The SDK is by far the nicest looking development toolkit I have ever seen. All of this came tumbling down when I finally saw that Apple is releasing the SDK for Mac OSX only. No Windows, no Linux, no good. I haven’t quite figured out what I’m going to do about this. A Mac Mini maybe my ultimate response since they’re the cheapest solution. Those that have known me for any length of time know my opposition of all things Mac. The iPhone was my first step outside that box, and now it may force me to take another step. I have NOT given into the Mac force. I’m simply using the only tool I can to do something I have been wanting to for the last 12 months. For now I have many other things to focus on, and I won’t be able to do too much with my iPhone. Finally, the cherry on top of my day. For those that like peanut butter, you know who you are, without hesitation I offer up the Fat Burger Peanut Butter shake. This was the greatest shake I have ever had!!!

Well, I can’t believe another weekend has come and gone. This weekend felt particularly long, and yet this is only the case because I had so much to do. On Saturday I helped Izzie out at his data center. We racked up a new server. It was much quicker than last time, all went very smooth. Afterwards we played a few rounds of Red Alert 2. The rest of the time was spent working on Jame’s and my new venture.

I got a pretty nice looking proof of concept put together. Unfortunately we are able to come up with features far faster than I am able to code them. I’m proud to say that at least we have something to show. I still have much work to do. Currently the show piece is just static code. The next big phase of the project will be to drop in the database aspect to the whole thing. It’s all planned out in my head, but every time I think about it I realize how far I have to go. This next week at school should be rather eventful. Between several projects and possibly getting the Arbitech job I’m in for a treat.

I did get a small moment to test out the iPhone FTP daemon offered by the dev team. I must say that my tests show this to be the perfect method for transferring those large video files to my phone. I was originally going to SCP the files to the phone, but I quickly discovered the limitations of that protocol when I topped out at 300kb/s. FTP resulted in a significant gain, 6.5mb/s. Thanks go out to Izzie for this awesome recommendation. I still need to write the scripts. Perhaps if I get sick of writing PHP for work, I’ll switch gears and write PHP for my iPhone.

I remember when I first wanted to start learning database driven web page programming. I asked a friend about PHP. He immediately scolded me and told me to use ASP, I didn’t really pick up on it. Fortunately, ASP .NET was release around this time. So, I tried that out and learned to code in it using VB. That worked for quite some time. I wrote my first multi-user web application in ASP .NET while I worked at Coast IRB. I started running into PHP when I had to modify a few little projects for Coast that I hadn’t written. Then I started tinkering with open source projects which are pretty much entirely written in PHP. Now, here I am, and all I write now is PHP. I wouldn’t venture to say I’m a professional by any stretch of the imagination. I still consult online forums and code examples frequently, but I have learned a lot while working on my various projects. I can safely say I far prefer PHP to ASP .NET. Well, I better hit the sack. Gotta rest up for whatever tomorrow has in store for me.

Well, the job at Arbitech is looking like a go. After they check and ensure I’m not a psycho bent on IT Armageddon through a background check I should receive an offer sometime next week. So, I’m on hold for a few days on the job front. As for coding I have some big milestones to hit this weekend. I plan on spacing everything out so I don’t go completely insane. I’ll throw in some light gaming between crazy coding, we’ll see how that pans out tomorrow. As for coding drive, I found some today :). I must forewarn my readers, I’m a big movie guy and as corny as it sounds I like reciting lines, playing soundtracks, and viewing my life as if I were in a movie on occasion (Mind you I have absolutely no desire to actually be in one). Consider yourselves warned. My dream car for as long as I can remember has been an Aston Martin, any flavor would do, because to me they’re all drop dead gorgeous. So, my vision: “I’m driving an Aston Martin V8 Vantage, manual of course, while blaring a compilation CD of the most popular James Bond intros. Cruisin up the coast.” So, there you have it, coding fuel. Go ahead, laugh, jeer. Say what you want, but it’s my vision, so no copying it. Plus should my vision become a reality I have all the right to laugh at everyone I see while attempting this life fulfilling moment. Alright people, lets hear about those crazy things that fuel our day to day lives.

Well, today was different to say the least. I started to pick out my classes for the next quarter this morning. I got a rough schedule put together before I headed out for school. I am lucky enough to have yet another quarter of driving to UCI everyday of the week. Once again I’m only able to take three classes and then everything else causes a conflict. It’s like UCI purposefully punishes transfer students and slows them down to make more money off of them. I was able to schedule in 18 units across 6 classes at Saddleback and IVC without any trouble. Whatever…so, I’m driving to UCI and I get a phone call from an unrecognized number. Normally I let them go to voicemail, but I had some time to kill and nothing going on for the day so I answered. It turned out to be Arbitech. I had interviewed for a part time position there about three weeks ago. I never heard back after the second interview and had by now presumed the position to be filled. I have my application in at Starbucks right now as my fall back. So, it turns out that Arbitech wants me back for a 3rd and final interview to meet the COO. I was a bit dazed over the whole thing figuring this job to be long gone. So, I’m set to go in tomorrow morning at 10am. I start pondering the schedule I created for the next quarter and it hits me that I have absolutely zero work time in this schedule. I have 7 separate classes in all for the next quarter. I haven’t quite figured out what I’m going to do. UCI doesn’t offer any evening courses, and every class is offered once, twice if it’s a really popular class. I was quite upset about this and contacted the deans office to find out why a school that’s making a couple million every three months not to mention state funding can’t offer some of their courses in the evening or at least twice a day. I left a message. I went through the rest of my day, I eventually got a voice mail from the deans secretary stating that I probably wanted to talk to Student Affairs. I’m not sure what to do on that front for the moment. They’re not going to listen to me anyway. I had planned on discussing the problem of non-English speaking math teachers and UCI’s un-flexible schedule. I doubt anyone else has complained. Everyone on campus doesn’t question anything, they’re just there and accept it for what it is. It baffles my mind to see all these people so worried about getting straight A’s on their report cards so that their parents don’t  kill them. They don’t turn out to be human by the time they’re done. After class I was driving home, and completely forgot a job I had to do, my mind was just racing over all the different things that had happened. Needless to say that customer was a bit angry, I’ve rescheduled for tomorrow morning at 9AM, it better be quick. I’m not running late for that last interview. I don’t need their patronage if I get this job.

I have soooooo much stuff to do, and yet I can’t seem to muster an ounce of energy to do any of it. I need to code a prototype for tomorrow as a proof of concept and I can’t seem to focus my mind on anything. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve been like this for the last few days. I just don’t want to do anything. It’s horrible. I’m wasting a lot of time that I don’t have to waste. I could just sit here and write for hours about seemingly meaningless subjects. Why is it so hard to focus? Perhaps I will try rewarding myself for coding. As I make progress on my code I will write some more on my blog. We’ll see if that works.

Well, not to much happened today overall, but I’ll catch you up on the little things. First, I called up Starbucks to see how the applications were moving along. They’re still going through the stack from Monday. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for that phone call. Hopefully by tomorrow I’ll hear something. Next up, a client of mine who is an avid VW fan like myself informed me that there is a beautiful Audi A6 S-series at our local VW dealership. I drooled on the pictures for a bit. I was seriously considering until I saw it was automatic. After slapping myself back to reality I realized that for a much smaller cost I could mod the Jetta further and escape starting another car loan. I think I will keep with this plan. Every once in a while temptation springs up and I want to get a new car so bad. Luckily it usually turns out to be a passing thing. If all goes well with Starbucks hopefully I’ll be posting some Jetta mods in a few months. I have started brainstorming my plan of attack for this new business venture with James. I still have a lot of research to do and hopefully this weekend I’ll get some time to do a bit. On my wireless video syncing front I did further testing today. I tried a bunch of scripts that are currently available for converting video for viewing on the iPhone and iPod Videos. None were super advanced and resulted in either poor quality video or unplayable formats. I have decided to pursue writing my very own script to do the conversion processes using ffmpeg. This will be my first major shell script so I’m guessing it’ll take a few tries. I got part of the script squared away this evening when I came across a post describing how to parse out values from the command line. Credit goes to prowla for this line found here. Using prowla’s command as a basis I have come up with a line to get the values needed to calculate proper aspect ratios:

tcprobe -d 0 -i filename | grep “frame size” | sed ’s/^*-g //’ | awk ‘{print $1}’

This returns just the frame size of the video that you input. From there I will parse the height and width and perform the division to figure out the appropriate conversion size and to add the proper amount of padding to the top and bottom of the frame. I’m going to try and make a bit more progress on this tonight. Once this is complete and I can properly calculate the values I will write a basic ffmpeg command to convert a video. I have settled on using MPEG4 compression, or lack there of, for compressing my videos. I have not had a single successful conversion with H264 that was playable on the iPhone, until I figure out the B frame settings and all of that I will stick with the easy solution. Once the videos are converted I will write a script to SSH them into my phone each morning at 1AM or something around then. If I can accomplish this I will be only a stone throw away from having a fully wireless media flow with my iPhone.

Me and two of my friends have been helping my boss do a major network migration this weekend. We started Saturday morning and finished last night. I’ll be going in tomorrow morning when everyone is back to help out with any minor issues. I’m really excited. This was a great income boost. While working I started drawing out my dream data flow for media between my devices. I’ll upload a picture later, but the idea is that TV, music, and movies will be connected to all my machines and will be wherever I want them when I want them. So, auto syncing of the latest shows to my iPhone and in time a machine in my car. I started work on this last night by constructing a little computer to work on downloading torrents. I will be using TED to fetch the torrent files for the various shows I want. Then I will use some kind of cron job to add the torrents to TorrentFlux. I have chosen TorrentFlux because of it’s web interface. This way I can queue up my own torrent as well. Ideally this will become my download server after I develop some kind of Rapidshare downloading site. Well I’m off to get some oil for the Jetta and grab an application for Starbucks. I’ll be going to the hiring fair today. I’m hoping I can get a job.

Well, today was good. Finished a presentation in English so I’m off the hook for Tuesday. Nothing major going on. Cruising home and within a mile of being home I look down at my tach and BLINK a yellow light clicks on. Yes the CEL was my Valentine’s day present. Turned out it was another P0420 code - CAT under performing. Thankfully I was smogged last year so in June I should be home free. Since I installed my big bore turbo inlet I periodically am visited by this CEL. Good news on an entrepreneurial front. I found out that a niche I thought might exist is looking more and more likely to be a great business opportunity. I will keep you posted of my progress on that and my other projects as we venture along.